Sid: This is Sid Roth with Tommy Reid. Tommy I believe has lived what he is teaching. His greatest desire is to have you do greater than him because he learned as a child that there is a dream from God for every human. And when you achieve knowing that dream and implementing that dream you have achieved your destiny. And his greatest desire is for you to achieve your destiny. Tommy let’s start with the first Jew, Abraham, what is God showing you?
Tommy: Well when I look at the life of Abraham I’ve got a lot of favorite Bible characters but he is my faith father so I love to start where he started. First of all Abraham did not come from what we know as a Jewish home or from a Christian home. He was a son of a idol maker but God encountered him. He had this encounter with God and God told him a number of things. He told him he would give him a child of the family and Bashan but he couldn’t have children. And so as he had this vision from God or this voice of God saying “This is who you are and this is what you’re going to do and you’re going to be a great nation.” One day he believed it and he did two things with that dream and this is the way that Abraham teaches us how to hear God’s voice. Number one he went to what I call the cathedral of God he went out in the open air where there’s nothing between he and God. It was the open heavens he could see the stars, he could feel the breeze he was in this again what I call the cathedral. And as he was there and hearing God’s voice and remembering God’s voice he did 2 things. First of all he reached down and he felt the sand. And he felt the sand going through his hands and he said “I see my children, there’s thousands of them, millions of them. I see my children.” Then he looked at the stars and he began to count them and he was enough of an astronomer know that there was more stars than he could count; “My children go beyond the numbers that I can count.” So the first take we…the first place he takes is dream, he takes it to the open air. I love to take my dreams what God says to me out of the open air. If you want to hear God’s voice get where there’s nothing between you and God. If it’s zero degrees take a walk and look at the stars it’s a wonderful place to hear God’s voice. Number 2 God says to him “Build me an altar.” The second place to hear God’s voice is in the intimacy of the altar. Its here we make sacrifice, it’s here we listen, it’s hear we hear the still small voice of God. And so my exhortation to anyone that wants to hear God’s voice is 2 places to hear God’s voice to hear the best. One is in the open air; the other is in the intimacy of your communication with God where there’s intimacy between you and God. And you know Sid hearing God’s voice ought to be so natural, we ought to be able to hear it as we drive our cars. I personally for 50 years I’ve always driven a convertible because I love to put the top down, I can hear God’s voice. It’s where there’s nothing between me and God. One story I close with I was a good friend of Robert Schuler’s and we had spent Wanda and I had spent a vacation with he and Arvella and 6 other couples at The Balls within the State on Maui. And one day we went out for a walk with him through the woods. You know we built a crystal cathedral nothing between you and God. And as you look at the crystal cathedral we were thinking about that. And so we went out for a walk in the woods and in the back of the estate old wooden platform. At the end of the platform was this hand hewn pulpit. He raised his hands and said “This is the greatest cathedral in the world there is nothing between me and God.” And so part of my advise is that your going to hear God find a place a place of intimacy and a place of expanse where you believe that God is going to speak to you. Does that make any sense to you Sid?
Sid: Well the key that I’m hearing you say is have nothing separate… go out into nature and believe that God’s going to speak.
Tommy: Yeah and you don’t commune with nature you commune with the God that made nature. There’s nothing…I’ve got to picture myself and see myself as being able to see God’s face to face and one to one. That’s the God that heals Tommy Reid when I was a boy. That’s the God that called me when I was a cripple; that’s the God that called me when I was a stutter and couldn’t speak. This God that I’ve known from my mother’s knee is the God that’s there’s nothing between me and this God.
Sid: Well you believe because scripture says that God wrote the purposes and the destiny of our life before the foundation of the world. That’s true for every one that’s listening.
Tommy: Everyone that\s listening? Yeah, I’ll be glad to. Every single person on the other side of this microphone even if you never heard God’s voice even though you’re listening today and it kind of caught you by surprise and your out there and you say “I never heard God I didn’t know if there is a God.” Listen because He’s speaking, He’s speaking in a language of dreams, He’s speaking in a language of visions and I guarantee you without a shadow of a doubt that if you’ll listen you’ll hear His voice.
Sid: Tell me about in your new book “How to Live Out of a Dream,” and especially the workbook portion to help you identify your dreams and bring them to past. Why did you set it up this way?
Tommy: I set it up this way because I want people to work their way through dreams. For instance I say that first I remember the first workbook “Praise” I ask the question “What dreams did you have when you were 7 or 8 years of age what did you dream about?” Did you dream about being a fireman maybe so but maybe that dream really meant you were supposed to rescue people. Maybe it means that you’re supposed to be a preacher and give altar calls. Maybe you’re supposed to be a person that witnessed to your Jewish neighbor who needs Christ, who needs to accept Him as Messiah. And maybe that’s what dream meant. Think about your dreams and write it down. And then I say the next question is “What did you do with it” did you follow it, did you throw it away or did you listen to it?” And so the questions are kind of like that and we go from truth to truth. First question is “When was your dream written by God, when you were born, when God created the world or before the foundation of the world?” And so we go through the chapters of the book and ask questions.
Sid: Now you talk a lot and I sure wish I would have understood this I wish everyone would understand; I want you to teach just a few minutes on the battle between the world around us and the world inside of us.
Tommy: I was first going to call my book “The Conflict” because that’s one of the great battles that we fight between we fight inside of us. I saw this big church inside of me but I looked up and it was a little church. Think of the dream that Henry Ford had, he had a vision of putting America on wheels. And yet there were no roads, there were no gas stations, there was no place to even drive the cars. And even if you had them and could sell them the people couldn’t afford to buy them. So how are you going to make a car that multitudes could buy. But that dream concord the dream around him. And that’s true with everybody no matter who the great man is. The dream inside of you, the dream of Henry Kaiser to build the Liberty and Victory ships. It took him what was it a year and 4 months to build a ship, but he shortened the time one time to 4 days to build a 450’ ship because it was a dream inside of him greater than the world around him. But there was a conflict; well my conflict was trying to build a church in Buffalo and wasn’t succeeding. I got an invitation to pastor a big church in Hawaii. When I was working with Dr. Cho we got an offer to co-pastor the great full-gospel church in Soul with him. But yet there was another church inside of me so I had to say no to one to say yes to the other.
Sid: Yea, after saying no to these wonderful opportunities things that people… it’s like unreal the opportunities that were presented to you Tommy. You finally God gave you a vision to build churches in Buffalo and you go there and for 7 years nothing is happening. Between you and me did you think that you really had missed God?
Tommy: Oh yeah, I think there’s times I think that all of us have doubts but not that overwhelming. I still knew it was inside of me; I still saw that church even though I became discouraged I knew that God was going to do it beyond a shadow of a doubt there was something inside of me. There was times of doubt yes. But there would also be times when I would have to move back into the world inside of me and say “God I still believe it.” But there was a time when God really spoke to me. There was a book I wrote a number of years ago with 3 visions in it. And one of the visions that I had I think was a stumbling block to building the church. Was I began to pray a prayer inside of me, the prayer inside of me was “God show me the world as You see it.” Now I thought I knew how God saw the world. I got that from all of the sermon’s I heard that God hates the world and he’s going to destroy it and He’s going to send all of the judgment upon it. That’s who I thought God was, that’s how I thought God thought about the world. And I prayed this prayer “God show me the world as you see it.” And one day I was driving my car and I don’t know who drove the car for the next 2 minutes it may have been a few seconds but I had this vision as I was pulling the car up onto the throughway and I was way above the world. Now remember the prayers coming out of me is “Lord show me the world as you see it.” And all of a sudden I took this, I had this kind of a bird’s eye view of the world and I saw the places I’d been in Korea, the Philippians the cities that I’d been in. And all of a sudden I saw the hands of Jesus nailed scarred and they came toward the world and I thought I saw the world as He saw it so I thought they were going to destroy the world. Instead they gently caressed the world and Jesus opened the world and inside I saw a broken heart. And Jesus said to me “Tommy, that’s the way I see the world and if you’ll see it that way I’ll give you a great church.” And my whole world changed, my message was different, my love for the Jew, my for the… you know I thought as some mistaken Christians have thought that that God wanted to judge the Jew because they had been part of the crucifixion. I began to realize that God loved them with an underwhelming love because He saw them with a broken heart. Everything about how Jesus saw the world changed and with that the church grew from 150 people to 800 in one week.
Sid: In one week! Well you make an amazing statement I’m going to quote you. “The world inside you is the seed you must plant in the world around you.”
